52 Weeks of Broken Promises

Floor Speech

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Mr. ARRINGTON. I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Banks), my friend and colleague from the Hoosier State.

Looking back over the last year under the leadership of this President and single-party rule, for a guy who wants my team to win, my team is not the Republican Party, Madam Speaker. It is the great United States of America. It is my children, quite frankly. Personally, it is my children who I want to inherit the blessings of liberty and opportunity in this great country.

That is our greatest calling, to hand this country back better than we found it, take on the challenges that face our country, work together to solve the problems, and make this a better, stronger, safer, more prosperous, more free Nation for the next generation. That has not happened, not even close, not even close.

I am disappointed to say that this President and his colleagues in the Democratic Party have absolutely failed our country. I didn't say they were bad people. In fact, there are many of them I would call friend and proudly. As a team elected by the American people to do the job I outlined, they have failed miserably. As we say in west Texas on Saturday morning after Friday night lights, when we are looking at the film, the eye in the sky doesn't lie. If you look at the footage, you watch the film, you can't help but see one self-inflicted disaster after another.

Madam Speaker, let's start with the tone and the promise to unify this country and its leaders, to usher into this Chamber and to politics and political rhetoric civility and unity. That is a big F.

This President, I would say, took more unilateral actions and, along with his Democrat leaders in Congress, have jammed through more partisan bills than they have worked together to address the issues facing this country. We are more divided today than we were.

If our Speaker, Ms. Pelosi, would actually focus on the things that would be required to prevent another riot on this Capitol, then you would have the Capitol Police and the Inspector General of the Capitol Police saying, we are better prepared than we were a year ago. We are actually less prepared today because there has been so much hyper- partisanship and so much political weaponization and theater than there has actually been real governing of our great country. So there is the tone which is failure.

The most important job of the Federal Government is to provide for a common defense. It is the safety and security of the American people. I know you have heard Chairman Banks. I am sure the remarks today have been replete with the debacle in Afghanistan and the sadness with which all Americans watched that. At the same time that they watched this needless, senseless incompetence, they saw America's credibility slip quickly, not only with our enemies but with our allies. I don't know if there was ever a time that the American troops packed up and left with Americans, our fellow citizens, crying out because we left them behind.

There is a litany of problems with what happened in Afghanistan. This President is ultimately responsible. He didn't listen to his advisors. People died. Our troops, we spent 20 years and trillions of dollars, we lost the lives of our sons and daughters in uniform to the tune of roughly 2,400. What do we have to show for it besides that embarrassment of a withdrawal?

I live in Texas. We are at ground zero with respect to the chaos at the border and the record number of people and crime activity and drugs that are powering into our country. This President has been derelict in fulfilling his sacred duty to uphold the law, plain and simple.

Worse, working with his Democrat colleagues in this Chamber, they have poured fuel on the fire that is burning out of control at the border by saying we will give you more carrots. We will create more incentives. We will turn the volume up so that people will come in by the millions with the offer of reparation, with the offer of citizenship, mass amnesty, the ability to vote in our elections.

You can't make this up, but this border crisis is real. The American people who live along the border feel like this President and their government has given up on them and has failed them. I would agree.

With respect to the economy, I know we had a tough job for all Americans and all leaders for both parties to get us up and out of the recession related to the pandemic. For this President and my Democrat colleagues, to put policies in place that incentivize people to stay at home rather than to go back to work, I am talking about enhanced unemployment policies. I am talking about welfare expansion without work requirements, actually a repeal of work requirements. To put massive amounts of government spending into the marketplace, it is no wonder that we are seeing runaway inflation in every corner of our marketplace and in every good and every service that our working Americans depend on.

The majority of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck have lost almost $400 a month on account of the real wage decrease because of inflation, self-inflicted, one after another, and the state of the Union is more fragile now than ever. It is less hopeful than it was 1 year ago.

I don't see any posture of change or relenting on the horizon from this President, even with these startling statistics and facts that are laid out plainly for everybody to see. I am not bashful to give blame or credit to either side when it is due, but this is a one-party rule. We haven't even talked about the crime spree, we haven't talked about the promises made and broken with respect to COVID, the authoritarian mandates in one breath and action and in another breath saying that we are going to work together and defer to States, this isn't a Federal solution. I am confused. I am concerned.

I have got to say 1 year in review is bleak and dismal. I don't say that with partisan glee, I say it with tremendous sadness and with profound grief over the opportunities lost in a backslidden country where we can do so much better. We have done better together. Republicans don't have all the answers. I don't have all the answers. But this has not been the great, strong, and constructive leadership that our Nation has seen in the past from, quite frankly, from both parties.

So I hope and pray, Madam Speaker, that this President will hear not my voice but the voices of the American people, the voices who cried out from the will of the people in Virginia where the We the People wave has begun, and that we will make changes, and that he will focus on the real needs; he will stop placating the left, which seems to be the MO and has been for the last year, and start focusing on the priorities that are important to the American people and to working families: safer neighborhoods; a secure border; strong, effective, and respected military and law enforcement; real growth; real opportunities; real wage increases like we saw when we cut taxes; and just a better quality of life and better hope over the horizon for our children.

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Banks for allowing me to be a part of today's Special Order.

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